2,700 miles, 105 days, one epic paddle from Minnesota to the Arctic Ocean

The pack of six wolves appeared swiftly on the horizon, in hot pursuit of a caribou mother and calf in the vast tundra of the Canadian Arctic. Splashing through the Meadowbank River, the predators bore down, indifferent to two paddlers floating into view.

Zach Fritz and Taylor Rau watched in amazement from their canoe as the mother fled, leaving the calf behind. Alone, surrounded, the young caribou was no match for the wolves, which pounced and pulled it to shore. The men floated within 30 yards of the bloody scene before the wolves retreated to a nearby hill, shooting back curious glances. Only briefly deterred, the pack returned to the calf as soon as the men passed.

By then, Fritz and Rau had been on the move for more than three months, and they were roughly 160 miles away from reaching their goal: the Arctic Ocean. Starting from near Big Falls, Minn., on May 6, they would eventually paddle and portage 2,700 miles over 105 days, through one state, three Canadian provinces and two territories.

Along the way, they crossed lakes that dwarfed Mille Lacs, skirted river rapids that could devour them whole and navigated one of the most isolated places on Earth — an area largely untouched by civilization, where muskeg swamps can twist an ankle and mercurial winds can topple even the most experienced paddlers. "Beyond Wilderness" is how renowned explorer Will Steger describes the region, a landscape where there is little margin for error and no safety net.

Yet even amid such an otherworldly outpost, Fritz and Rau would recall the wolf attack as a transcendent experience, one that brought a bracing sense of clarity about their place in the world. The adventure "put into perspective pretty quickly how small you are," Fritz said. They realized it was possible that they were the first humans the animals had ever encountered, and ever would.

'If you don't have common sense, you don't survive'

Fritz, 28, and Rau, 26, didn't find their way to the Arctic as greenhorns. While growing up in the greater St. Cloud area, both cut their teeth in the Les Voyageurs program. Founded in 1971, the Sartell-based organization has a mission similar to Minnesota wilderness camps like Widjiwagan and Menogyn, teaching life skills by exposing young people to weeks-long adventure expeditions.

When Rau enrolled at Les Voyageurs, he was a novice paddler at best. It instantly became his passion. "That first trip for me was, 'I have to do this more,'" he said. Fritz might have been even more dedicated. Fritz's dad, Troy, said he has spent exactly one of his son's birthdays with him since Zach turned 16: The younger Fritz spent all others in or near a canoe.

During their time in the program, both men recalled alumni who inspired their imagination with tales of doing the Rediscover North America route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean and across Canada. "I remember thinking, I'd love to do something like that one day," Fritz said. Both would eventually guide trips for Les Voyageurs, with Fritz serving as the organization's program director until last spring.

In 2019, Fritz and Rau guided a group of six on the Coppermine River, which stretches from Canada's Northwest Territories-Nunavut border to the Arctic Ocean. The trip took more than 40 days. "I realized, oh my gosh, the Arctic is very underrated," Fritz said. "I don't think people realize how beautiful of a place it is."

Not long after, Fritz was still working on an environmental studies degree at St. John's University in Collegeville when he began looking at maps and thinking of possibilities. Pieced together with the help of old journals and the advice of veteran paddlers, the route he would eventually settle on linked historic rivers like the Kazan in the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut, which runs through a main migratory corridor for caribou, while also relying on trade routes used by the voyageurs and fur traders centuries ago — wild country inhabited eons before them by Indigenous groups including the Cree and Inuit.

What began as a "big puzzle of the veins of the landscape" of the northern waters was finalized in 2022. And Fritz decided the trek would begin from a treasured place for the Fritz family — their cabin on the Big Fork River in northern Minnesota.

Still, it was one thing to plan a trip and another to actually do it. "I could wake up and keep looking at this [drawn route] every day, or I could go out and see it in person," Fritz said. "One day it kind of clicked, like I need to take the first step, and I think the first step is reaching out to find somebody who could commit to it, too."

Rau was first on his list.

The two began preparing in earnest in the spring of 2023. They restored the gunwales to a 17-foot Dagger canoe, known for its stability in whitewater, and designed, cut and stitched a spray skirt. They prepared and packaged a small mountain of food. Ninety percent was dry goods: They dehydrated meat and fruit and prepared enough venison jerky to feed a football team. They also baked Hudson Bay Bread, a go-to mixture of calorie-dense oats, sugar and butter.

The two also sought counsel from those who went before. Bob O'Hara, a retired biology teacher from St. Louis Park, offered maps and experience. He has canoed the far north since the late 1960s and for a time headed to Nunavut's Baker Lake almost yearly. He worked with Fritz for a year to help plot a route that best tied in big lakes and major rivers. Wind is a chief concern, he said. Dubawnt Lake, west of Hudson Bay, is "like two Mille Lacs," O'Hara warned, so Fritz came up with an alternate route to stay inland if needed.

"There is a lot of situational planning and critical thinking, and no two times are the same," O'Hara said. "You just have to have your wits about you, and common sense. If you don't have common sense, you don't survive. That keeps all the dummies out of there."

Intense days — and sublime moments

After they launched in early May, Fritz and Rau spent the first third of the trip paddling hard through connected waterways. They had the vast Lake of the Woods to conquer. Soon after, they needed 15 days to cross Lake Winnipeg, paddling much of it at night during lighter wind. Some days demanded 10 to 12 hours on the water. By the end of the trip, after so much sitting, Rau had worn through the seat of his Columbia pants.

Discipline and daily routine helped the two persevere and steer clear of possible danger. They had three different emergency communication devices tucked among their gear, just in case. And, as O'Hara said, they kept their wits. The two ran some rapids and encountered all classes, but they also "lined" their canoe, walking on shore while using a rope tethered to the Dagger to float it through dangerous water or over rocky ledges. On some fast rivers, they hopped in and out of the canoe repeatedly.

Crosses on the shoreline offered reminders, sobering memorials to paddlers lost. "That definitely humbles you a little bit and makes you think, maybe this 10 extra minutes to walk around [the rapids] is worth it," Rau said. "You also could look out in the river and see a hole that could swallow a house, so that helps, too."

The pair traded roles breaking camp or making meals. Breaks to switch positions in the canoe or eat lunch were dialed-in like clockwork, too.

The pattern kept them focused, they said, and gave them a mental edge through the physical toil. They shouldered their 70-pound canoe on portages, in addition to their personal packs and an equipment pack, each of which were also about 70-pounds. Their food pack could weigh double until they ate their way to some reprieve. Sometimes, progress was measured in what seemed like steps, not miles, as they walked their canoe through waters that were drying up or they slogged through deep mud. Other times, in favorable conditions, they would exceed their general goal of 26 miles a day.

"It's challenging because it is day in and day out," Fritz said. "You don't get those breaks."

Hazardous interactions with wildlife turned out to be the least of their concerns. Their 12-gauge shotgun stayed in its scabbard. Small pests troubled them more; biting midge flies coated their packs in a buzzing black mass one day, drawing blood and forcing them to their tent.

Still, they were fortified by support in varied ways. Fritz's parents helped deliver the third of four resupplies, driving barrels of food, new maps and even a few books to Southend, Saskatchewan, to meet up with the men at a campsite nearly 50 days into the trip. The last 125 miles of the drive was on gravel.

And intense days were balanced with sublime moments — of migrating herds of musk-ox, a bearded bison-like mammal close in size to a small SUV, of curious caribou running through camp, of bears walking the shorelines, indifferent to two passersby, of lake trout so bountiful that their fins rippled on the water's surface and of that wolf pack that wrestled down a meal after separating it from its mother.

The fishing, too, got better as the trip lengthened. So much so, they laughingly recalled having to put their rods away because every cast produced another trophy trout. One snapped Fritz's fly rod.

In the final days of their journey, Fritz and Rau paddled for hours before taking their last strokes along the Chantrey Inlet on the Arctic Ocean. From there, they took a pre-arranged, six-hour boat trip across the sea to the tiny island community of Gjoa Haven. Perhaps fittingly, even that ride was a stark reminder of their whereabouts before their return to modern life: Piled in the back of the boat, they sat atop their gear — and two dead caribou shot by the villagers at the helm.

Back home in late August, the men smiled at the memory of a place beyond wilderness. "It might go decades before people go back through these areas [of our route]," Fritz said. "Our goal from this is to inspire others to check out these places. ...

"There is a lot of good reason to go through them for fun because you are not going to see other people there. You are going to see a lot of wildlife. You are going to have great fishing. You are going to be able to have that adventure that you can't get in a lot of other places."